🧵 | 1/n
I try not to chime in on these kinds of things – but I happen to hold degrees from two of these fine institutions and felt compelled to offer a perspective.
2/n
First off, Brown doesn’t even have a law school. Neither does MIT, Princeton, Dartmouth or Tufts.
This should tell us that none of this is about law school. It is quite openly about whether our service members should or should not be exposed to worldviews that might contradict those of Department leadership.
Are we that concerned that our impressionable young officers are going to be brainwashed by those nerds at Harvard – or should we be more concerned with ensuring they have a seat at that table?
3/n
If we zoom out, this policy direction is symptomatic of a much more concerning trend.
For most of American history, military service stitched the country together.
Officers in WWII came from West Point and Annapolis – but also from Harvard, Howard, Stanford, Texas A&M, and everywhere in between.
Elite and working class. North and South. City and farm.
Didn't matter. Wasn’t perfect. But it was shared.
4/n
That ended in 1973.
The draft disappeared. The all-volunteer force was born.
It solved a short-term political problem.
It created a long-term civic one.
5/n
Since 9/11, less than 1% of Americans have served.
The force draws disproportionately from:
• The South
• Military legacy families
• Communities with fewer civilian alternatives
War has become a family business, and everyone in this business kinda knows that.
6/n
Meanwhile, elite universities rewrote their relationship to service.
ROTC disappeared from campuses like Harvard, Yale, Stanford in the post-Vietnam era.
The message wasn’t always hostile.
It was quieter than that: “Our graduates don’t do those jobs anymore.”
7/n
The services adapted.
They leaned into places that still welcomed them.
Texas A&M. The Citadel. Virginia Tech. North Georgia.
Proud schools. Mission-driven. Strong.
But increasingly disconnected from the institutions shaping America’s civilian elite.
8/n
Over time, we built two Americas:
1. One that fights the wars.
2. And a second that debates them.
That divide has consequences.
9/n
As this divide became hardwired into American culture, the military became more professional.
More capable.
More isolated.
And, as it became isolated, it also lost prestige among the most competitive civilian pipelines.
For a top student at MIT or Stanford, the battlefield was no longer Fallujah or Helmand Province.
It became McKinsey. Or Goldman. Or Google. Or SpaceX.
10/n
This is not a moral judgment on either population.
It’s just a reality of talent flow.
Among the schools most heavily recruited by Big Tech or MBB or the top investment banks, very few are meaningful contributors to the officer corps.
Conversely, the most prolific ROTC sources barely register in elite civilian hiring.
Two ladders. Rarely crossed.
11/n
To the extent possible, the service academies tried to fill the gap.
West Point, Annapolis and the Air Force Academy produce motivated, high-character leaders.
But they also operate inside a closed loop.
A 3.8 from West Point is not the same as a 3.8 from MIT or Swarthmore. Anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is either lying or doesn't know better.
This is not an intelligence question. It is a question of competition.
12/n
The great American pastime gives us a useful analogy...
There are ~840 AAA baseball players and ~780 MLB players in American baseball. Combined, these guys represent less than one hundredth of 1% of all the ballplayers in the world.
To the outside world, they all look elite.
People who live inside that world, however, can spot the difference in less than five minutes.
The difference is not heart or work ethic. Everybody has heart. Everybody works hard.
The difference is whether you have competed in the deepest pool, under the brightest lights, against the best in the world, every day.
13/n
Now bring it back to law schools and the JAG Corps.
If we narrow Tuition Assistance eligibility away from elite civilian institutions, we’re not punishing Harvard or Yale. They'll be just fine.
What we're actually doing is limiting the free flow of ideas, the free flow of talent, between the military and the broader legal establishment.
Since when are we afraid of ideas?
14/n
JAG officers aren’t just operational lawyers.
They:
• Advise commanders on use of force
• Engage with Congress
• Interact with federal courts
• Operate in international legal forums
Credibility matters.
Institutional signaling matters.
15/n
We can stop pretending there isn’t a prestige hierarchy in American law (or society, more broadly).
A JD is not a JD. An MBA is not an MBA. All policy degrees are not created equal.
In law, this hierarchy shapes Supreme Court clerkships. It shapes who staffs the Solicitor General’s office. It shapes which professors influence constitutional doctrine. It shapes congressional deference.
A JAG trained at Yale or Stanford walks into that ecosystem already credentialed inside it.
That does not make them better people.
It makes them legible to the people who wield legal power in Washington.
If we narrow the pathway that allows military lawyers to train inside those institutions, we are not flattening hierarchy.
We are withdrawing from competition.
In a democracy that governs through law, that matters.
16/n
Our leaders know this, both present and past, and many of them went to the same institutions which would now be off-limits to current servicemembers.
Pres Trump went to Penn.
VP Vance went to Yale Law.
Sec Hegseth went to Princeton and HKS.
Sec Driscoll (Army) went to Yale Law.
Sec Kendall (USAF) went to both CalTech and Georgetown
17/n
The list goes on.
McChrystal studied at Harvard and taught at Yale.
Gen Petraeus and Gen Milley both went to Princeton.
Gen Dunford earned a Master's degree from Georgetown.
Gen Mattis became a Hoover fellow at Stanford.
Gen Eisenhower was president at Columbia.
Even Teddy Roosevelt went to Harvard.
18/n
Now, it's fair to make an argument that these schools have changed since Teddy Roosevelt was a freshman, that these schools are now somehow culturally adversarial to the military community.
The hard truth, however, is that the answer to intellectual friction, to cultural friction, is not isolation. It is immersion.
If you are a no-go at this station, do you take your ball and go home? Sometimes, the only way out is through.
19/n
Otherwise, when fewer officers circulate through elite civilian institutions:
• Fewer civilians personally know military leadership.
• Fewer officers understand elite civilian institutions.
• Suspicion grows on both sides.
The tether frays further, the relationship more fragile than ever between the civilian world and the military that exists to protect them.
20/n
This is not about Brown. Or Harvard or Princeton or whatever.
It's about signaling a worldview that earns applause on morning cable - but that quietly hardens the wall between the military and the institutions that shape American law and policy.
Applause is cheap.
21/n
We already live in a republic of strangers.
The fewer shared formative experiences we have across class and institution, the easier it becomes to caricature each other.
John McCain and John Kerry could disagree fiercely on policy and still just as fiercely defend each other’s service.
That bond came from shared burden.
One of those guys went to Yale. The other guy went to Annapolis.
22/n
If the American elite no longer see the military as “their” institution…
...and the military no longer sees elite institutions as part of its ecosystem…
...we don’t get a stronger republic.
We get parallel tribes.
23/n
If you believe the military has been culturally sidelined by elite academia, well, okay.
But we don't rebuild legitimacy by voluntarily withdrawing from debate.
That's called quitting - and it’s how you cement the divorce.
24/n
A healthy republic requires tension between its warriors and its lawyers, policymakers and elected officials
Between force and law.
Between battlefield and classroom.
If we eliminate that friction, we don’t get unity.
We get echo chambers, on both sides, and everyone is wrong.
25/n
This isn’t about defending Ivy League tuition.
It’s about asking whether we want a military that circulates through America’s most competitive institutions – or one that withdraws from them entirely.
History suggests isolation comes at a price.
End 🧵
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